Nine member states share our CAP reform concerns

IRELAND is part of a 66% majority of member states with concerns in the Common Agricultural Policy reform debate, said Agriculture Minister Joe Walsh this week.

Nine other EU member states share some or all of our concerns about the proposed reform, he said.

On Monday, he gave a commitment to 34 young FETAC-Teagasc certificate graduates in Co Cork that he will not agree to changes to the Agenda 2000 version of CAP that would impact negatively on the young farmers’ futures.

“These proposals constitute, in my view, the most fundamental change in the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy since it was established,” he said.

Minister Walsh said he sees no reason, either within the enlarged EU or from the point of view of the forthcoming negotiations on agriculture in the World Trade Organisation, to embark on such significant reform at this time.

He said he believed that Irish farmers and the Irish economy would have to bear a disproportionate share of the adjustments which would result from decoupling direct payments from production and from modulating the direct payments of farmers receiving over €5,000 a year.

“The combined effect of decoupling and developments at the WTO is likely to be a reduction in EU production of beef and sheepmeat, with a disproportionate share of this reduction taking place in Ireland, and the prospects of a price increase being negatived by third country imports”.

“I have reminded my EU colleagues that we are not really talking about agricultural sectors. It is individual farmers and farm families who will be affected by these measures.”

“I am not prepared to contemplate the damage to the economic and social life of Irish rural areas implicit in the present proposals,” he said.